Reviews

 
It’s a night for the marriage of architecture and opera. The Walt Disney Concert Hall will present tonight its first of four performances of  The Marriage of Figaro with sets designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, whose sketch is shown, left, and costumes by Azzedine Alaïa)
Meanwhile in Santa Monica, The Broad Stage and LA Opera have joined forces to co-produce the world premiere of Dulce Rosa, a modern opera by composer …

As part of our ongoing coverage of Pacific Standard Time Presents:Modern Architecture in L.A., we’ve talked about a show that looks not at individual buildings but a boulevard. It is called Windshield Perspective and it opens tonight with a party at A+D museum.
From Griffith Park, to Mulholland Drive, to its many miles of sunny beaches– Los Angeles is a place that attracts those in search of …

In an age of complex digital design LA artists and architects are turning to specialty fabricators to build their concepts. Smilee Barnacle talks about “making” in LA’s new age of manufacturing. And Bobbye Tigerman looks back at a past community of makers and designers, profiled in her Handbook of California Design. Plus, DJ Waldie talks about how Angeleno-style mobility was off limits to him …

The design pack was out in force Wednesday night at the opening of the Mak Center’s Everything Loose Will Land at the Schindler House, the So Cal HQ for bohemian salons and unfettered progressive thinking and making since the 1920s. The Good4Nothing Connoisseur, aka Bennett Stein, reports.
The history-rich scene show (and what is history really but the right now anyway) is guest curated by Sylvia …

When Alissa Walker isn’t doing thoughtful interviews (like this one with Brendan Ravenhill on this week’s DnA) or putting the world to rights (through causes like advocating for the rights of pedestrians), she is writing witty take-downs, like this skewering of the oft and tired skewering of LA by envious New Yorkers (and nothing stokes a skewering of a sunny, creative place than being harried …

If you want to know what’s going on in interior design and decorating, ask Mallery Roberts Morgan. Here she gives her recommendations for La Cienega Design Quarter’s Legends, starting tonight.
Legends is a three-day event with a jam-packed schedule of panel discussions, book-signings, showroom events, exhibitions, cocktails and lots of parties. Most of the event schedule is open only to design industry professionals – either by invitation …

As many designers get ready to head to ICFF at the vast Javits Convention Center next week, others are getting their design fix with friends in the patios of showrooms in the La Cienega Design Quarter (the design district on and around La Cienega, between Beverly and Santa Monica Boulevard), which will play host to LEGENDS, a two-event blast of store displays and discussions starting this Wednesday, May 8. This …

Sean Dougall is an LA-based designer who cut his teeth working on the production design of some of the biggest awards and political events of the last decade (the 2008 Democratic National Convention, for example). Andrew Paulson is his partner in life and work who staked his name out here as a literary agent for a New York agency. Now they have formed a …

Downton Abbey or M/M? Paris Photo or John Parkinson?
In a coincidence of timing longtime frenemies, the French and the British, have launched cultural campaigns in LA that are reaching a crescendo of activity this week.
From the Cultural Services arm of the French Embassy comes “Ceci N’est Pas”, meaning, with inimitable Gallic obscurantism,  ”No, This Is Not” (an allusion to Magritte’s Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe, n’est-ce pas?). It …

As part of KCRW and DnA’s ongoing coverage of Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A., Art Talk’s Hunter Drohojowska-Philp reviewed the current shows at the Getty and LACMA. She writes:
“With ‘Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, 1940-1990,’ the Getty Museum and Research Institute launch their next round of PST exhibitions. The show at the Getty itself, on view through July 21, thoroughly and somewhat …